Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-02-24
LESSON OF A RAILWAY HORROR.
The Protection that the Travelling Public is
Entitled To.

LESSON OF A RAILWAY HORROR.
The Protection that the Travelling Public is
Entitled To.
Philadelphia Record.
What do railway managers care if a
score or two of passengers, caught In a
wrecked train are burned before the very
owes of their friends? The officials of
railway seem to imagine that their duty
10 the travelling public is performed when
comfortable cars are run on fast schedule
time. They do not take into account the
chance of accident, simply because the
human mind is so constituted that it ig-
nores contingency which only presents
itself remotely and avoids so far as may
be the contem plation of possible mis-
fortune. To heat train of cars by steam,
or to provide baggage-car with a pro-
fusion of wrecking instruments, is a mat
ter of expense that to railway man
ayers probably seems unwarranted by
the slight chances of disaster attaching
to the trip of any particular train. This
is the reason why men and women are
burned alive after escaping the shock of
a collision or deraiiment by which pass
enger train has been wrecked. In Ohio,
after the Ashtabula horror, and in New
York, after the frightful collision near
Spuyten Duyvil, it was sought by Iegis-
lative enactments to afford some addi
tional degree of security to the immense
army of travellers whose constant danger
these dire disasters had made apparent.
But such regulations were of no avail be-
yond their effect in quieting the general
clamor against penurious and brutal
methods of railway management. Rail-
way operators have steadily continued to
take all chances of and no adequate pre-
cautions against accident without other
excuse than that it would cost money TO
guard their passengers against the fate
that befell those victims who persisted by
fire at 81 creek, at Tiffin, and now at
White Ri,rr junction.
There is not, there never has been, any
question as to the responsibility for loss
of life sustained through the burning of
wrecked train. At Carr's Rock, at An
COLA, at AshtabuIa, and at all the scenes
of sickening horror that have attended
catastro- hes of this nature Throughout
this country, the loss of life by shock or
by actual ma: CLING was scarcely 1.-THE of
that resulting from the burning of the
cars while the victims were yet entangled
in the debris. With no axes or wrecking
implements at hand, brave men have
been forced to stand IN the biting wintry
air and see their fellow creatures con-
sumed by flames long after the instant of
disaster had been passed and escaped. This
happened at White river; it has happened
IN numberless other instances no less
horrible to contemplate. And for all
these shrieking vainly struggling victims
whose souls went out in flame and smoke,
amid fortunes inconceivably agonizing, the
men who manage the railway must be
morally, if not legally, held to account.
There can be no excuse save the evasioDs
of ayarice, for the presence in swiftly
moving car Of stove filled with glowing
Goals, and the Withholding of proper
supply of wrecking tools constitutes an
offense scarcely less odious and deserving
of condemnation. The spectacle present
ed at White river, where strong men
tugged Vainly with bare and bleeding
hands ct heavy timbers under which their
friends were pinioned, to be driven away
at last by the advancing flames, is one
that has been repeated in all these disas-
tiers so often that the public mind has
boon hinnted to it's necnliar- atrnoity- A
sharp ak might have liberated any of the
victims: But there were no axes, no
buckets, no pole-hooks-none of the APP
pliances that under such circumstances
must be at hand if the work of rescuing
the living is to be accomplished.
To foreigners the stolid patience of the
American people under conditions of
travel such as involve horrors like this
latest hetatomb is something mex plicable
and paralyzing. With ample powers to
remedy the evil, nothing is done or even
attempted; and each shocking sacrifice of
human life is glaz2d over as dispense
lion of providence, whose lesson is pa
thence and long suffering. But it is rather
a dispensatiOn of human recklessness aud
greed which calls for instant reform and
speedy suppression.
The outwOrn and dangerous practice
of heating cars by living Goals should be
stopped by legal enactment. Each pass
enger train should similarly be compelled
to carry an abundant supply of wreckipg
implements, and railway managers who
do not comply with these requirements
should be disciplined by exemplary pun
lshment. Nothing less conclusive than
this will afford that protection which So
clety owes to its members. Nobody will
venture openly to assert that the horrors
of death by fire are part of the legitimate
risks of railway journey; and the man
or corporation that secretly acts upon
such an inhuman theory occupies the po-
sition of An enemy to civilization.
Heating Railway Cars